(RESOLVED) Black Screen Woes

I've been experiencing the black screen w/GC3 mouse cursor and sounds issue on my Acer Predator 15 2016 for at least a couple of weeks. I only started gaming on it again recently and ran into this issue. The last time I had played GC3 on (Pre-Intrige and Pre Win10 1803), the game played great on my laptop.

Specs:

i7 6770HQ

16GB DDR4 2133

256GB SSD (OS and a few games)

1TB HDD (data and games, where GC3 lives)

Windows 10 x64 Home updated to 1803

Intel HD530 iGPU + NVidia GTX980M 4GB

As it stands I am forced to use my Intel HD530 iGPU to play the game on low settings with lower FPS, especially nearing turn-200 in the current game. If I use the NV GPU (980M 4GB). I've done a number of things to try to resolve the issue, including everything listed and suggested in the Steam thread I created. I have no issues with other games on that laptop, just GC3.

I can sometimes use ALT+ENTER (around 12-20 times) and will end up seeing the GC3 game itself and be able to play using the NV GPU, but then the game locks up when I exit. Most times I cannot do this though, and the performance on the iGPU sucks at low on 1080, dropping to the teens fairly frequently. If it could maintain over 25FPS I'd probably complain a bit less about it. The NV issue exists whether full screen or windowed. I've tried old drivers new drivers, old versions of GC3 pre-Intrigue, without Intrigue checked in Steam, etc. Nothing seems to change it. I've wiped out my NV configs, Intel GPU configs, everything GC3 related multiple times. I've gone through SFC, DISM and in-place upgrades as OS repair methods to ensure the system files and image were in good condition (no issues found, in-place upgrade is similar to the OS Refresh in this style of usage). I've tried full screen, windows, different resolutions (I normally run 1080), so far nothing seems to resolve the issue.

I have a gaming rig with a 4790K, 16GB DDR3, GTX980Ti, Win 10 x64 Pro 1803 that does not exhibit this issue at all...runs perfect.

I've submitted a help request thread over on the Steam forums which I started in late May, and created a ticket with SD support that was closed about 12 hours later telling me to come here to ask for help instead. So here I am asking for help.

*IMPORTANT NOTE*Once you are booted into a clean state, you may need to Install the Steam service again. You can do so by trying to start up Steam. If Steam asks you to install the Steam service, simply hit "Install Service" and try to boot up Steam again:

I did all of the suggested to no avail. I had tried a new profile last week, did so again and even created a brand new profile, clean boot, fresh install after a purge. Same problem. I appreciate the suggestions! This is one odd issue to say the least...

Note the date an time on your pref.ini file prior to starting the game. After you start the game, is your pref file date the same or newly stamped with the date and time of the moment you started the new game?

If it is stamped with a new time, use the image above to shut off Steam cloud sync and do the test again.

If it stays old (does not update) it proves that it is grabbing a dated prefs.ini file from Steam - essentially overwriting any manual changes you have ever made to it each time you ran the game.

Shut of Steam Cloud sync entirely after confirming the prefs.ini was updating when the game was launched. No change.

Even when Steam Cloud was disabled, the prefs.ini still updated when the game was launched, and also before disabling sync even just on the game itself, my settings were persistent to what I applied to the prefs.ini. That's how I was able to get windowed mode to work. Setting fullscreen to 0 and resolution to 1600x900 for testing. I did so again and have attached the screenshot below.

Deleted prefs.ini with cloud sync disabled, which created a new prefs.ini, no change. Also updated to the just released yesterday NV drivers, no change.

I let Windows 10 update the Intel GPU drivers, and have been using official NV drivers since I purchased the laptop used in early 2017 when it arrived with Acer drivers initially.

I updated to the most recently released NV drivers just two days ago. But I haven't looked any further into the Intel drivers since the last time Win10 updated them, and that's the GPU that doesn't have issues with GC3. Go figure!

Well I caved, reloaded Win 10 using the Acer restoration media. GC3 is still launching to a black screen with mouse cursor and sound in NV mode, and works fine using the Intel GPU. I was able to ALT+ENTER in NV mode a little easier than before (fewer tries)...but exiting the game still results in it running, consuming around 3.5GB and doing nothing until I force it closed in Task Manager.

I don't even know what to say at this point. For a game that worked fine a couple months ago, now this and nothing I do seems to fix it...I'm at a loss right now. I kinda hoped that the OS reload would be that unnecessary fallback. Now it's just another item to check off the list of failed resolutions.

Edit: I tried a few more random things that I had already tried before, but finally something was able to make a change. If I set the resolution to a 4:3 resolution like 1280x1024, then the NV rendering works normally (at that resolution). Changing to any 16:9 resolution results in black screen + mouse cursor + sound, full screen or windowed. This was on the Acer driver, most recent Windows driver, and the most recently released NV driver.

Hopefully I won't have to play at a low resolution that's the wrong aspect ratio to play the game, but at least I was able to see a difference this time around. Last time I tried this resolution before the OS wipe and reload, it made no difference. So there was a change after all.